Grace is Gone: Critic Reviews

Grace Is Gone grabs on to a name, a war, and the metaphor-come-to-life of a theme park with rides going nowhere. And we, the people, are spun around and shaken for tears.

For most of its 85 minutes Grace Is Gone, a small, tender film about contemporary parenthood in wartime, carries off a delicate balancing act.

A moving and tender family drama, built on the foundation of a serious contemporary issue.

Rather than challenging our national aversion to unhappy endings, both in life and in cinema, [director] Strouse plays right into it. He's devised Grace Is Gone to work on our sentiments the way a porn movie works on our libidos.

This is a movie that lobs even appropriate criticisms from a safe distance, a flaw its strengths can't overcome.

Good intentions can only go so far.

Not a great movie, simply functional, but Cusack gives a great performance.

'Grace is Gone' works best in the quiet moments. ... Shelan O'Keefe couldn't be better ... this low-keyed weepie belongs to her.

Cusack's climactic confession is heartrending. But too many other moments strain credibility.

Although clearly coming from an antiwar perspective, the story's emotional effectiveness and family grounding give the film a real shot at connecting with general audiences across the political spectrum.

A barbell of a movie that carries some weight at either end. What's in between is purely utilitarian, though.

All three [principal characters] sometimes just disappear into the affectless, low-energy drift of Grace Is Gone. They stare at carpets, curl up on motel room beds, sit on sidewalks, gaze at the featureless American landscape.

If Martian Child is the price film goers must pay in order to get Grace Is Gone, then it's a worthwhile trade.

A disappointing and manipulative look at one family's loss in the Iraq war.

It's stirring, even gut-wrenching, on the strength of John Cusack's terrifically restrained performance as a husband in denial over the death of his wife in Iraq.

No politics, no pleading. No artifice.

In a year that has seen wave after wave of films addressing the war in Iraq with varying degrees of anger and frustration, Grace serves as a gently thoughtful coda and reminder of what continues.

Una pelicula intimista, humana y conmovedora, con gran actuacion de John Cusack y estupenda banda sonora compuesta por Clint Eastwood.

Cusack really steps into the character of the uptight, conservative, grief-stricken Stanley and the little girls who play his daughters are amazing.

This heartfelt film is a bitter-sweet snapshot of a man and the special relationship he cements with his daughters as he takes them on a spur-of-the-moment road-trip.

The power of the ending comes from the inherent pain of loss, but it's no feat to recognize how emotional this would be, to tell us it's coming and to dangle it in front of us for an hour and a half.